‘On Pause’ and Staff Laid Off: The Garage by Steve Giralt Is ‘Pivoting’
The Garage, a well-known visual effects studio with clients ranging from Apple TV’s Severance and Netflix’s Zero Day to Busch Light and Billy Joel, is “pivoting.” Owner Steve Giralt is looking to sell the studio or find another future solution.
The Garage found a niche for itself by combining camera work and robotics to create wild, unique visual effects. The one that put the studio on the map was a “Burger Drop” back in 2016.
“Years ago, one of my earliest experiments traveled around the world. It was a burger assembling itself in mid-air. Behind it was robotics, code, handmade Arduino tiny systems, and hours of trial and error. But at the end of the day, what people saw from behind the scenes was magic. That magic captured what became The Garage,” Giralt says.
But now, 10 years later and despite a massively impressive client list, The Garage is at a crossroads. While he hasn’t filed for bankruptcy, Giralt says that he is the only active employee as he attempts to figure out what is next for the studio.
“The Garage has not filed for bankruptcy. It is an option we are considering but we are also in talks with a couple potential buyers, so it’s on ‘pause’ at the moment,” he tells PetaPixel in an email. “Still technically in operation at the moment. We’re just exploring options on how to keep it moving forward in a new structure. Hopefully, we find a potential buyer, and I stay on as creative lead ushering us into the next chapter. This is a pivot, but not yet a hard stop. The size of the team we have and infrastructure was designed for a pace of work that has now changed. Ever since the SAG strikes, business across the industry has gotten more challenging.”
Giralt blames a shifting industry environment made worse by the rise of AI.
“The reality is that this industry is totally changing. I don’t think it’s a downturn. I feel it’s a restructuring. We’re seeing more production moving in-house or offshore. Budgets are compressing and traditional pipelines are breaking. And then, most recently, AI showed up at the door. It didn’t knock very nicely either,” Giralt says in a long video posted to Instagram.
But despite this, Giralt says he’s not actually worried about AI’s effect on the creative industry going forward.
“A lot of people are really scared about what AI is going to do to the industry, but honestly, I’m not. I feel like we’ve been here before. We’ve seen this before,” he continues. “Digital didn’t replace film, recorded music, didn’t replace live music, and printers didn’t replace painting or sketches made by hand. They expanded what was possible, and that’s what’s happening again. I don’t see the future as traditional or AI. I think it’s a hybrid.”
But that future hybrid he sees isn’t compatible with the studio he built 10 years ago.
“The reality is that The Garage was built in a more traditional production system, and that traditional system is slowly dissolving.”
As a result, Giralt is “starting a reset” to figure out what comes next, admitting that “the shape is not clear.” He tells PetaPixel that he is still working and in fact did a shoot last week where everyone on the team was a freelancer, which he says is pretty typical for how most production companies work right now.
This isn’t Giralt’s first time facing difficult financial situations. In 2020, off the success of his studio, Giralt launched a Kickstarter for The Garage Learning, with the goal of providing resources for filmmakers of all skill levels, which would allow them to create content to the level The Garage reached. Unfortunately, after raising $410,000 through crowdfunding, The Garage Learning filed for bankruptcy in 2022.
“It’s okay to experiment. It’s okay to build something weird. It’s okay to try new things. And sometimes those experiments fail, and sometimes they inspire somebody else to do something awesome. So while the garage may be pivoting, the experiment continues. At the end of the day, if something we did push you to go after your own crazy idea, then it was all worth it,” Giralt concludes.
Image credits: The Garage
